Following on from an interesting conversation about Peak Oil and manual tools started by Earthpal over at The Coffee House (‘Renewable Energy: the power of the human body‘), I started thinking about how I could reduce my use of powered tools around the house. At this time of year, one of the most frequent routine tasks is mowing the lawn. My 20-year old electric rotary mower is still going strong, but I haven’t got a clue how much energy it uses in its dotage, and it’s a heavy beast to use. With fond memories of the sound of hand mowers whirring lazily in the afternoon sun, I bought one of these babies.

The Qualcast Panther 30 Sidewheel Cylinder Lawn mower is a thing of beauty. It’s as light as a feather for starters, which means you can literally lift the whole thing plus a full box of grass clippings with one finger. If you’re mowing after rain it doesn’t leave ruts on the lawn, unlike my electric dinosaur, which is nice for those of us who garden on heavy clay. And there’s no need for unravelling the cable, finding a socket, testing the circuit breaker and all the rest of the faffing about you have to do with a powered machine. And I don’t do my back in carrying it up and down the steps at the back of the house. And it does a better job in less time.

Go on, I dare you, buy one of these now. It’s £37.95 from Amazon, including delivery. It’s great fun and great value, they have zero carbon emissions, and you can mow the lawn during a power cut.

It had to be April 1st, didn’t it, but it was no joke. I doubt if anyone noticed, but yesterday morning while updating this site to enhance your viewing experience, some finger trouble on my part caused a WordPress widget to go berserk and bring down the hosting server. It took about a day to restore from a backup and recreate the subsequent posts. And that merry prankster post I spent hours on has passed its sell-by date, and will have to be put on ice for next year. If it’s still topical.

None of this has done anything to improve my mood. I was in a dark place for a while, and seriously considered giving up this blogging lark altogether. However, my mate Nick at Dream Hosting helped me through it and here we are again. In one of my blacker moments I considered moving to a new hosting service, preferably one that has a position on envionmental issues. A quick Google shows there’s a load of options out there. Here’s a random sample.

“Give your carbon footprint the red card!” say www.greenwebhosting.co.uk, who claim to be an affordable earth-friendly service, 100% solar powered and Fairtrade friendly.

NSDesign Web Hosting say they “recently became one of the few web service companies to become carbon neutral, by completely offsetting our carbon footprint”. NSDesign has partnered with Tree Appeal to offer a tree planting carbon offset service. The presence on the Tree Appeal home page of two photos of that ghastly, misguided old duffer ‘Professor’ David Bellamy doesn’t tempt me to pursue this option.

Eco Web Hosting “provide carbon neutral web hosting and green web hosting throughout the UK”. They offer “individuals and companies a carbon neutral web hosting service. We carefully calculate the carbon emissions of our servers, and offset them by planting trees in Ransom Wood Business Park.”

A swift glance suggests that the majority of ‘green’ web hosting services justify their claims by using carbon offsets. Outfits like Greenwebhosting that invest directly in renewables to power their data centres seem to be pretty thin on the ground. Careful research is needed to make sure you get the right service for your own personal ethical stance. Another complicating factor is price; I pay £9.99 a year for my current site, I would have to pay seven times that amount for a basic solar-powered service with Greenwebhosting, offering a fraction of the web space and bandwidth.

Decisions, decisions. Why does everything have to be so difficult?

The winner of the Innovate or Die Pedal Powered Machine competition is the Aquaduct, a pedal-powered vehicle that stores, filters and transports water. Intended for use in developing countries where clean water is scarce and obtaining it is challenging, the Aquaduct comprises a storage tank, filter, peristaltic pump, clean tank and clutch, mounted within a tricycle-like assembly. As the rider pedals, the pump draws water from the storage tank, through a filter to a 2 gallon clean tank, which can be removed on arrival. When more water is needed, the tank is replaced, the clutch engaged and the Aquaduct can be pedalled while stationary. Videos of all 102 entries to the competition can be viewed here.

Some of this sounds a little familiar. In December 2007, the BBC’s Dragons’ Den featured a team from Red Button Design, a Glasgow based speculative design company, seeking funding for a product called “Reverse Osmosis Sanitation System” (ROSS), “an innovative water transport, sanitation and storage device designed to bring relief to the 1.2 billion people across the world without access to safe water.” See their pitch here.

The core principles behind both devices are very similar, using the energy from the circular motion of the wheels to pump water through a filter, but the implementations are very different, with the Aquaduct designed to be ridden while ROSS is a tank pulled by a pedestrian.  The Aquaduct won a competition sponsored by Specialized, the cycle company, so the form of the solution was pre-determined by the entry rules. “The answer’s a bicycle, now what’s the problem?” The ROSS team, on the other hand, used the problem as a starting point, and this shows, as does their awareness of issues such as simplicity, robustness, maintenance and cost of ownership. I’m sure that both devices could do a worthwhile job, but on cost grounds alone ROSS wins hands down, at around £20 a pop. Where can you get a customised tricycle for £20 nowadays? Which is more likely to be stolen, a bike or a water tank?

There’s some amazing snobbishness about technology for developing countries. One of the Dragons wanted to compare costs between ROSS and a conventional standpipe/purification plant, as if to suggest this was the only ‘proper’ solution to the water problem. When Freeplay wanted to push Trevor Baylis’s clockwork radio out in the developing world, people got very sniffy about fobbing Africans and Indians off with ‘primitive’ technology. The idea that leaving a plastic bottle of contaminated water in the sun for a day would kill nearly all the microbes was scorned across the board because it would be seen to remove the urgency for providing wells and standpipes. Never mind that thousands of lives could be saved.

Back in the 70s and 80s, there was a brief attempt to move away from the term ‘alternative technology’ to ‘appropriate technology’. These two devices are undoubtedly appropriate, not just for the task they have to perform, but for the environment in which they will be put to work.

A year ago, General Motors launched the Chevy Volt, a battery-powered concept car that has generated a huge amount of interest with the car-buying public. Amidst growing speculation that GM are having problems with the Volt’s battery technology, to the extent that they are steering potential customers towards their hybrid models, the car giant unveiled two more ‘alternative’ fuel vehicles at this year’s North American International Auto Show. No batteries here: the Hummer HX (pictured above) and the Saab 9-4X both run on ethanol.

Alongside the new concept cars, GM Chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner announced a partnership with Coskata Inc, an Illinois startup company with breakthrough technology which affordably and efficiently makes ethanol from practically any renewable source, including garbage, old tires and plant waste. Using patented microorganisms and bioreactor designs, the Coskata process can produce ethanol for less than $1 a gallon, about half of today’s cost of producing gasoline. For every unit of energy used, 7.7 units of ethanol energy are produced, compared to conventional corn-derived ethanol which provides 1.3 times the energy input. Less than one gallon of water is used for each gallon of ethanol, a third that of other processes.

The GM-Coskata partnership coincides with last month’s Energy Independence and Security Act, which calls for a huge increase in the use of biofuels, from 7.5 billion gallons in 2012 to 36 billion gallons in 2022. Amid growing concerns over the effect on food prices caused by diverting food crops to bio-fuels, the search is on for viable alternative bioenergy crops. A joint study involving the US Department of Agriculture and Midwest farmers has identified the potential of switchgrass, a native North American perennial grass (Panicum virgatum) which can deliver more than five times more energy than it takes to grow it. Sounds good; a native plant, must be good for biodiversity and the environment generally as well as for energy. Sadly not; the impressive efficiency figures demand that the switchgrass is planted in dense monocultures, fed with artificial fertilisers and optimised with genetic ‘tweaking’. It will also require a lot of land. Even though switchgrass and its cousins grow happily on marginal land, an estimated 3.1 million to 21.3 million hectares of existing US agricultural land is projected to be converted to perennial grasses for bioenergy, the majority coming from the reallocation of existing cropland, with land currently enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program and pastures coming second and third.

It’s clear that American technologists are working hard to justify President Bush’s long-term mantra that technology can solve all our problems. The major worry is that there are so many new technologies and initiatives competing for investment, not all of which will succeed and with no guarantee that they won’t cause more problems than they solve. Against a background of imminent recession in the US economy, will all this effort actually pay off in time?

GM-Coskata announcement

Coskata “Next Generation Ethanol”

“Net energy of cellulosic ethanol from switchgrass”

Shares in Ceres Power Holdings (CWR.L) rose sharply this morning on the news that Centrica, the parent company of British Gas, has taken a 10% stake in the AIM-listed fuel cell company. The shares are being bought at £3.00 per share, substantially lower than the £3.25 they reached last September when Ceres announced successful trials of their domestic combined heat and power (CHP) boiler. (“Domestic Micro-CHP”)

The total investment is around £20m. Centrica will also pay £5m to Ceres in staged payments to support the development of the CHP units, with £4m conditional upon the achievement of specific milestones. The agreement will grant British Gas rights in Great Britain to market and sell the Ceres CHP unit to domestic customers for four years. Last September, British Gas commented:

“Plans are underway to move from the demonstrator prototype to field trials which will culminate in a commercially available product, but it will be a few years off before we have anything on sale to customers.”

Today’s announcement is consistent with that position, providing a guaranteed investment stream for product development, so no immediate prospect of having our own gas-powered power station. We can only speculate on the kind of take-up BG will get for this product. Those who remain skeptical of the idea that small individualistic gestures can ever change the world will no doubt dismiss it as an irrelevance. And what use will it be when the gas runs out?

These uncertainties don’t seem to bother E.ON, who have today announced a similar agreement, with Energetix Group (EGX.L), to develop a micro-CHP device. E.ON will fund the testing and evaluation of a Genlec micro-CHP system at the Energetix facility in Cheshire. The evaluation, scheduled for completion in the first half of this year, will outline the energy savings achieved during testing of the system and assess its commercial value. E.ON estimates that the device could reduce residential energy bills by up to £150 a year.

A flyer in my weekend paper announces that Londoners are to be offered the chance to exchange two traditional light bulbs for two free energy efficient bulbs. From 11th-13th January, take your nasty old incandescent bulb along to any branch of B&Q and trade it in for a lovely new long-lasting, energy-efficient compact fluorescent lightbulb (CFL). While stocks last. This is a joint project between B&Q, British Gas and the Mayor of London. According to the Mayor’s web site, the initiative is a “stunt-led PR activity across the city, [involving] above the line marketing, promotional activity, point of sale information packs”. Its purpose is to “help raise awareness of the importance of using energy efficient lightbulbs”.

http://www.london.gov.uk/sponsorship/opportunities/environment.jsp

There are so many issues and unanswered questions raised by this it’s difficult to know where to start.

• Presumably it’s OK to swap a dead bulb, we’re not told. But who keeps dead bulbs lying around just in case of a trade-in opportunity? It’s highly likely that the majority of people participating in this exercise will be presenting perfectly viable bulbs for exchange.
• I never shop at B&Q. My nearest store is about 5 miles away, in an area I never go to. Taking part in the amnesty will require a round-trip of 10 miles.

All of which devalues the ‘freeness’ of the new bulbs. As for the whole idea of phasing out old bulbs, which underlies this initiative, don’t get me started. Oh, I have.

• CFLs are not 100% satisfactory alternatives for incandescent bulbs. They’re subjectively dimmer and the light has a different quality, an effect that becomes more noticeable amongst older people as their eyesight deteriorates. CFLs are not suitable for activities such as reading, sewing or electronics. A 11 watt CFL is not equivalent to a 60 watt incandescent, despite what it says on the box. In practice, users will end up switching to 20 watt bulbs and even installing additional lights to compensate.
• CFLs tend to be longer and heavier than old-style bulbs, so they often don’t fit existing light fittings. Ceiling roses may need to be ‘beefed up’, small lampshades may have to be replaced with larger ones.
• As has been publicised recently, information on disposal is vague, inconsistent and unavailable. While the current health scare about the mercury content has been over-played, people still need to know that CFLs are different and need to be handled accordingly.

Don’t get me wrong, I support the use of CFLs where appropriate. I even have several installed in my house. I do not approve of the current blanket policy of phasing out and banning. I am planning to stockpile incandescent bulbs so that I can continue to find my way round the house in my old age.

Oh yes. Ken, that link on the flyer still doesn’t work, get it fixed.

8th January Update: At last Ken’s found someone to fix that link at www.london.gov.uk/lightbulbs/
There are some interesting snippets of information in there. Good to see that someone agrees with me that CFLs are different.

For technical reasons, the glass used to house energy saving light bulbs has to be opaque – not totally transparent, so shouldn’t be directly compared to clear traditional bulbs.

I’ m grateful to the guys at Ecospace for drawing my attention to this little baby. The boffins at Nokia have come up with a piece of kit that has the potential to extend the capabilities of mobile technology to a completely new level. Or it might prove a complete non-starter that never sees the light of day. Whatever, as with the car industry, it’s a fair bet that what actually hits the shops will be nothing like this prototype.

Nokia’s key concept is to combine a mobile phone and a compatible sensing device, enabling you to “stay connected to your friends and loved ones, as well as to your health and local environment”. Applications in the frame at the moment include the local environment, e.g. weather conditions, UV levels or atmospheric pollution, and the user’s health (blood pressure, pulse rate etc), with more to follow. Perhaps they’ll develop a plugin Geiger counter. According to Nokia “You can also share the environmental data your sensing device collects and view other users’ shared data, thereby increasing your global environmental awareness”. One has to wonder why we would want to, other than giving us something new to put on our Facebook site.

Apart from being a solution in search of a problem, the Eco Sensor Concept is interesting for its ‘green’ credentials, incorporating the 3 R’s of Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. The use of printed electronics reduces the size of electronic components. Bio-materials such as PLA plastics and elastomers reduce the use of non-renewable inputs and require less energy. The case will be made from 100% recycled steel. The electrowetting display will use less energy than conventional screens. The remote sensor will incorporate solar cells, and may also employ kinetic or heat energy from the user.

http://www.nokia.com/A4707477#stayintouch

And apparently it’s a phone too. Not quite in the “I Want One Of Those” league yet, though.

Shares in Renewable Energy Holdings (REH.L) were up today on the news that the green technologies firm has agreed a deal to purchase the Kobylany wind farm site in Poland, which will provide 30 MW of generating capacity with an accompanying off-take infrastructure and transformer station. REH will pay €68,000 per MW of generating capacity, making a total of €2.04m. The agreement allows for an initial lease term of 25 years, with an option to extend for a further 25 years.

The annual lease payment will be €25,000 (plus VAT) with an additional annual payment of €7,000 (plus VAT) for each turbine on the site. It is expected that there will be 15 wind turbines altogether. Construction is expected to start in Spring 2008, financed by REH’s credit facility with Standard Chartered Bank. Good to see the credit squeeze doesn’t apply for renewable projects.

REH is active in wind, wave and biomass. The company owns the CETO wave energy technology, which it is developing in co-operation with Carnegie Corporation.

The Department for Communities and Local Government has indicated that the necessary legislation for a more relaxed planning regime for domestic microgeneration equipment – solar panels, heat pumps, biomass boilers and combined heat and power schemes – will be published in Spring 2008. The results of a consultation paper, on the extension of householder permitted development rights for microgeneration, were published last month.

“The Government wants to encourage the widest possible take-up of microgeneration equipment whilst ensuring the reasonable interests of neighbours, the environment and the wider community are protected.
“In the light of the responses to the consultation, the Government now intends to provide permitted development rights for the following types of microgeneration: solar panels, wind turbines, heat pumps, biomass and combined heat and power, subject to specific limits and conditions that will ensure that any adverse impact on others is not significant.
“We will be bringing forward secondary legislation to implement these changes for householder microgeneration in Spring 2008.”

84% of respondents agreed with the proposal that there should be no additional permitted development rights for hydropower
microgeneration. The government “does not intend to provide permitted development rights for this type of microgeneration”.

Permitted Development Rights for Householder Microgeneration: Government response to consultation replies

An article in last Sunday’s Observer (‘How Africa’s desert sun can bring Europe power‘) describes a £5bn plan to generate electricity in the deserts of North Africa and the Middle East, and export it to Europe. More than 100 solar installations, each equipped with an array of thousands of mirrors, would generate enough power to provide Europe with a sixth of its electricity needs.

The Trans-Mediterranean Renewable Energy Cooperation (TREC) is a joint initiative of the Club of Rome, the Hamburg Climate Protection Foundation and the National Energy Research Center of Jordan, campaigning for the transmission of clean power from deserts to Europe. TREC has researched and developed the DESERTEC concept in cooperation with the German Aerospace Center. In Brussels on November 28, former Club of Rome president Prince Hassan bin Talal of Jordan presented a White Paper “Clean Power from Deserts – The DESERTEC Concept for Energy, Water and Climate Security” to members of the European Parliament.

The project aims to exploit cheap desert land using a technique known as ‘Concentrating Solar thermal Power’ (CSP). A CSP installation consists of an array of adjustable mirrors covering around a square kilometre. The mirrors focus the sun’s rays onto a central pillar filled with water. Temperatures inside the pillar rise to 800C, causing the water to be vapourised into superheated steam which is channelled off and used to drive turbines which in turn generate electricity. The residual heat will then be used to power desalination processes to provide fresh water.

White Paper

I found it quite amusing that the Observer can’t tell the difference between CSP and photovoltaics. Or perhaps they just couldn’t find a picture of a CSP site in their archive and thought their readers would be too dumb to notice.

Afterword: Having published this post I went off to do something else, but found myself thinking some more about the TREC scheme. It has interesting political implications if it goes ahead. It seems the next logical step in the process of incorporating North Africa and the Middle East into some kind of Greater Europe. Where will Europe’s southern boundary be redrawn, and how will it be defended? And how will issues of energy supply security be addressed?

I just don’t know.